AUGUST 2006

Apologies, as this is the first update for a while. We have spent the last few weeks at Holly Gate being very busy, both with propagating plants, and assisting many visitors with their selection of plants. It has been lovely to have so many visitors and we hope that everyone has enjoyed their time spent here. We are particularly grateful to all those customers who braved the very high temperatures back in July and hope that you didn't suffer too much!

We had to wait for seemingly ages for the weather to warm up, but when it did, it went from one extreme to the other and all the plants decided to start to grow at once. And we have spent the last couple of months doing masses of potting and re-potting and taking cuttings from our Cactus Garden. Everything that usually flowers early was about a month later than usual, which has caused us problems with propagating our Epiphyllums, since they all  had lots of flowers still  to come out, when we would have normally been taking cuttings to root down to make plants for sale. We have a lot of Epiphyllum plants for sale at the Nursery, but not enough of any one thing to be able to list. We are going through our stock of plants and cuttings at the moment and are  trying to make a sensible list to send out for mail order, so that our customers are not disappointed when they order. We will also have a supplementary list available soon, of plants which we now have available in large enough numbers to list for sale, which we did not have at the time  we printed our Catalogue. If you are on our Mail - Order list, you will automatically receive the list sometime in September. It will also be available to download from the website. If you would like to receive Lists and information from us, then send us your details via the post or email info@hollygatecactus.co.uk and we will put you on our database and keep you informed about any offers that we have.

The Cactus Garden has been full of flowers all summer. The very hot weather shut some of the plants down for a while, but as soon as it cooled down a bit, the flowers came out again The Echinopsis, in particular, have had several flushes of flowers and have been spectacular. The living stones [Lithops and Conophytums etc.] are now all springing into life and the first few flowers are out. There are still quite a lot of flowers out at the moment, changing every day. A number of the Opuntias have lots of flowers and buds which are about to open soon and several of the Aloes are in flower. We have been watering and feeding the plants all summer but  they have been drying out very quickly with all the hot weather. Fortunately, as August has been quite cloudy the last watering has lasted  a little longer and they seem to be enjoying this. 

                                              We hope that you may be able to visit us soon.

                                                                              Sue Berry. 

                                                                      [Terry Hewitt's daughter.]